South Korean citizens watch a live broadcast at Seoul Station of President Moon Jae-in and First Lady Kim Jeong-sook meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his wife Ri Sol-ju at Pyongyang’s Sunan International Airport on Sept. 18, 2018. (image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — The vast majority of South Koreans believe that North Korea is unlikely to ever agree to surrender its nuclear weapons.
According to a survey conducted by the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University of 1,200 South Korean adults aged between 19 and 65, 89.5 percent of the respondents said that North Korea was unlikely to abandon its nuclear weapons.
This figure is up 14.4 percentage points compared to 2018, when North Korea attended the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, and both an inter-Korean summit and U.S.-North Korea summit were held.
Namely, South Koreans’ perception about North Korea slid back to the level of 2017 (89.4 percent) when the conflicts between the two Koreas and between the U.S. and North Korea were severe.
In response to a question asking “Do you think North Korea is changing?” only 39.3 percent of the respondents said yes, a level similar to 2017 (31.9 percent). This figure represents a dramatic drop compared to 2019 (70.9 percent) and 2018 (77.3 percent).
However, the share of the respondents who thought North Korea’s possession of nuclear weapons was a threat to South Korea fell to 76.1 percent from 79.2 percent last year.
The share of those who thought it was possible for North Korea to launch military provocations against South Korea grew slightly from 58 percent to 61.2 percent.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
